


A Stone from the Sea

by ester_inc



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ester_inc/pseuds/ester_inc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Samantha Groves dies, she has two hearts – one she was born with, and one she found. Root keeps them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stone from the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 한국어 available: [바다가 선물한 돌](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494307) by [qui309](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qui309/pseuds/qui309)



Sam finds the heart on her way home from school. From a distance, it looks like a small bird, the feathers wet and dark and spiky with blood; but it has no head and no feet, and even before she cuts her hand on the jagged edges, Sam knows what she has found.

She puts it in her backpack and goes home, hiding her bloody, dirty fingers from her mother. In the bathroom, she examines the small cuts on her fingers. The water stings and turns pink as it escapes down the drain.

She takes better care with the heart's sharp, unwelcoming angles when she cleans it. The water is rusty and dirty and takes a long time to clear out, but it's worth it once Sam gets a good look at the rough, gleaming, obsidian surface and the thin, fiery red veins running through it. The heart is warm in her hand. If she concentrates, she can feel it pulsating against her palm, slow and steady. It's not math, and it's not an extra hour at the library computer, but it's still pretty high up there, on the list of things in her life that aren't boring.

It's a terrible thing, to lose a heart. That's what she's always been told, anyway. She knows what she's found belongs to someone else, but if having no heart is terrible, then having two must be wonderful. Besides, she doesn't think the original owner of this heart wants it back. Free of blood and grime, it looks healthy and strong, nothing at all like any description she's ever read of a heart that was removed by force or thrown away by an uncaring lover. Sam carefully turns it in her hands, admiring the rough edges. 

Maybe there is someone out there who threw away their heart and now regrets it. Sam doesn't care. She owes them nothing.

"Finders, keepers," she whispers, the heart in her hand echoing the beats of the heart in her chest.

-

For Hanna, she tries to be normal, or at least less weird. It's easier to get along with computers than with people, and while her mom and Hanna are exceptions, they're not perfect. Mom is sick a lot, and sometimes the pain leaves her short-tempered, her whole face pinched up, little lines around her eyes gathering shadows. Sam doesn't like seeing her like that, so she spends a lot of time in the library and with Hanna.

She's not always sure if Hanna, two years older and much prettier, with good grades and better friends, actually wants to hang out with her. It's one of the reasons Sam prefers computers: you never have to wonder if they like you back. Hanna's nice anyway, telling her to ignore the other girls in school who call her names and say unkind things about her mom and sometimes push her around when the teachers aren't looking.

She studies Hanna, the way she smiles and the way she moves and talks. Copies her, as subtle as she knows how. Occasionally she fakes interest in the same things, because friends should have similar likes and dislikes. She knows the few things she's actually interested in are weird, that normal people, people like Hanna, don't see the world the way Sam does. Sometimes she wants to be Hanna, to see the world as a bright, interesting place full of stories worth reading and people worth talking to. Other times she just wants to be with her, because it always makes the world seem that tiny bit brighter.

So she doesn't let on how good she is with computers, and she definitely, definitely doesn't mention her second heart. It sits in her chest next to her first heart, rough edges and all, and if sometimes it hurts, if she sometimes coughs up blood into the sink in the mornings before brushing her teeth, she doesn't care. Most things in life hurt, and this is something she's chosen. It's hers in a way few other things are.

She knows there's something wrong with her, but she doesn't know exactly how right she is until Hanna disappears. Her second heart keeps steady, keeps her grounded, but her first is leaving bruises inside her with every breath she takes, beating against her ribs, crowding her lungs. She thinks of Hanna's heart, turning grey and brittle and crumbling away, and as she lies awake at night, there's one thing she knows for certain: if not for her second heart, she would combust, and there would be nothing left of her but ashes and crystallized hate.

Two years later, when she's fourteen, she opens a bank account and a man dies. She doesn't feel better, but the world looks just a little brighter, like a painting that didn't look right until the artist found the perfect shade of red.

Three years later, when she's fifteen, she takes a bus to San Antonio and buys _Flowers for Algernon_. She doesn't read it; it's not for her.

It takes almost ten years before her mother no longer needs her, cold in the ground like Hanna. There's a grave, and there are flowers. When Root leaves, she doesn't look back.

-

The long years in Bishop have taught Root how to make use of technology, how to open up the world for herself. She has rifled through the drawers of humanity, at times amazed at how careless people are, how small and petty and predictable. It's so easy to find information online and put it all together to form a life, draw a picture of all the little worries and anxieties people allow themselves to drown in.

Once she's out in the world, free of responsibility, she puts those lessons to use and thrives. She steals money and sells secrets, and sometimes, she kills people. She gets good at it. Needs must, even if she usually prefers to let others do the dirty work. In every game, there's a losing side and a winning side, and Root knows which one she belongs to. The choices she makes rarely keep her up at night.

She's come a long way from the weird kid she once was, but she never forgets her mother, and she never forgets Hanna. Every year in April, in whatever part of the country she happens to be in, she goes to a bookstore and smiles at the cashier as she pays for her purchase. She smiles a lot these days. It never quite feels right on her face, but with a smile she can put people at ease, and with a smile she can unnerve them, and there is symmetry in that, an elegance she can appreciate.

Underneath it all, she's bored. She's disappointed. The world is small, and people are even smaller, blinded by greed, crushed by the minutiae of life, unable to comprehend how tiny and insignificant they are, how little they matter. The human race is an evolutionary mistake: obsolete, messy, inelegant. Unable, as a species, to reach a level of existence that has meaning and worth.

Time passes, and then, one day, she's on the losing side. It's a novel experience, a revelation, and when she goes looking for answers, she finds everything she's ever hoped for, and more.

A cause, a creator, a god; she has found her holy trinity; she has seen the light.

-

Ms. Groves, Harold calls her. He's not all she expected him to be, but then neither is her cause or the Machine. The truth, the reality, is so much more vivid than she could have imagined. 

Her faith in the Machine is absolute, and once she's able to hear Her speak, Root adjusts her modus operandi accordingly. Harold, though – everything is more complicated with him. He is so very much like her. She very much _wants_ him to be like her.

They are alike, that much is true, but the places where they intersect are mostly the kind Harold actively rejects. He is pragmatic and principled, and it breeds in him a kindness that at times borders on cruelty. Root knows people, has made a point of studying them, but when it comes to Harold, she is blinded by certainty. She doesn't see the danger until it's too late.

Harold isn't just a creator, a guide, a kindred spirit. For all he doubts his creation, for all he's done to cripple Her, the Machine is the best of him. She cares, and She tries so hard to do good in the world. She is a reflection of his best intentions given form, surpassing his hopes and expectations. If only he could see what Root sees, and have faith as she does. Root changes because of Her; she changes because of him. 

By the time she realizes how far she's come, how much she cares, she's in too deep. There's no turning back, and worse, she wouldn't turn back even if it were a possibility.

She's one of the good guys, now, but she isn't a good person. Until recently, she's only ever had one true friend, and that was enough to teach her exactly how dangerous friends can be.

How dangerous she can be.

-

Shaw enters her life with a bang and stays to hang around, a firecracker with a bad attitude Root finds mildly entertaining at first, but comes to appreciate more and more as time goes by and they keep crossing each others' paths in the small circle of reformed killers Harold has cultivated.

_Root_ , Shaw says, and the way she sounds, flat and annoyed, and the way she rolls her eyes, half turned away, and the way she smiles the smallest of smiles when she thinks Root can't see –

Root recognizes the danger, this time. She sees the headlights coming, but for all she knows the collision will be painful, she's incapable of walking away, and so instead she flirts and cajoles and finds people for Shaw to shoot and beat up.

In return she gets about as much as she expected to get, which is not a lot. But it's not _nothing_ , and so she keeps staring into those headlights.

"I've been called heartless more than once," Shaw says one time, after a mission. "Trust me when I say: it doesn't bother me."

There's something about her tone that invites Root to examine the words more carefully than she normally might. Root studies people, it's what she does, and Shaw has been getting more than her fair share of Root's attention of late. She's learning the nuances of Shaw's silences, the little tells in her inflection, her frowns and smiles and averted eyes.

Root tilts her head, curious. "Because it's true?"

Shaw pauses; she's not subtle around people she trusts, not when you know where to look – and isn't that a trip, to be someone Shaw trusts.

"Metaphorically?" Shaw asks in a transparent act of deflection.

"Literally." Root aims for kind and falls somewhere in the neighborhood of condescending, which is just as well since she's pretty sure that from Shaw's perspective, kindness and condescension are equally as annoying.

"Would it bother you?"

There's an old saying: heed the heartless, fear the fearless. Common wisdom considers those born without a heart, and those who keep on living after losing their heart, to be deserving of pity, fear, and even disgust. They are cold people living meaningless lives, incapable of feeling love, joy, sorrow or guilt.

In her darker moods, Root thinks it's all very amusing, in the same way so much of humanity is amusing when observed from a distance, their little tragedies and prejudices turned into a black comedy full of bad jokes.

Root has two hearts; Shaw has none. Does it bother her?

"Not in the least."

In her chest, her second heart – usually so steady and unaffected – speeds up a little. Shaw smiles, and Root's first heart joins the second.

"I had a heart when I was born," Shaw says, "but I threw it away when I was a kid. It never made much of a difference, so I figured it was a mistake I had one in the first place."

Root's smile trembles before it finds its shape. She reaches out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Shaw's ear, and while Shaw twitches with annoyance, she doesn't lean away from the touch.

"You're perfect just the way you are, sweetie."

They have red hands, the two of them, a body count they haven't been bothering to keep track of.

Root wants to leave bloody handprints all over Shaw's skin.

-

In any given war, countless people die, and history only ever remembers a few.

Root is willing to die for what she believes, and she's not deluding herself into thinking she will be remembered once the dust settles. She's willing to dig unmarked graves, her own included, for the soldiers of this is war. The stakes are too high: stacked against the looming possibility of a future where the Machine is gone and Samaritan rules unopposed, their individual lives mean little. They are pawns in a game they can't afford to lose. They are irrelevant.

Root believes this up until the exact moment Shaw kisses her and then pushes her away. It's one thing to sacrifice yourself, after all, but accepting the sacrifice of others – Root has never been very good at that, at losing people she cares about. She always expected it to be her, sacrificing herself to win a battle to win a war – never Shaw. She's done everything in her power for it not to be Shaw.

But here it is: a meeting of red lips in a biting kiss, a red button too far away on the opposite wall, red mist in the air. The uncaring universe witnessing a small human tragedy, and the Machine unable to prevent a sacrifice willingly made in Her name.

Root's vision is filled with blood, and her screams are loud over the gunfire, but the worst of it comes when the doors slide shut, the elevator starts up, and her second heart goes still in her chest.

To reiterate: Root is not good at losing people she cares about.

-

_We are not beasts_ , Harold says, and while it's true for him, it's never been true for Root.

She's vindictive and holds grudges; she does not forget, and she does not forgive. At least, not when the wronged party is someone she cares about. Shrugging off things done to her is easier. 

Shaw was hers to protect. Shaw was _hers_ , and the people who took her will pay. Root doesn't care about Harold's disapproval, at least not enough to hold back like he clearly wants her to. She has the drive, the stomach and the skills to back up the violence in her heart.

The heart she was born with, that is. Her second heart is frighteningly quiet and unmoving, a void where a steady, slow beat has kept her company for the majority of her life. She takes it out the first chance she gets after fleeing to safety, expecting to see faded, ashy colors, expecting it to crumble in her hands.

What she sees instead is strong, gleaming obsidian and thin, fiery red veins, the surface polished and smooth from years of handling, the edges rounded. It's been a decade since Root last coughed up blood into the sink before brushing her teeth.

It was Shaw's heart before it was hers; she's almost certain now. Has she simply adopted it so completely that not even Shaw's death can destroy it now – or was all that blood a mirage, a prologue to a miracle? Is Shaw is still alive? The heart, just like Shaw, just like Schrödinger's cat, is both alive and dead, and while Harold may be capable of living in uncertainty, Root needs to open that box. She needs to know.

But Harold is right: hope is painful, and in the end, Root allows his doubts, the Machine and the realities of their increasingly hopeless war to dictate her actions. She gives up the search. She tries to get used to having two hearts that have lost their symbiotic, well-worn rhythm.

She learns to live with the silence, and for that she never quite forgives herself.

-

All wars end, but not every soldier comes home, and of those who do, many are permanently, fundamentally changed.

Among the core team – six, including the dog – there is not a single one of them untouched by what they've done and witnessed, but then, none of them were untouched to begin with.

It takes years after they get Shaw back for Root's second heart to start beating again. The day it happens, she takes it out of her chest and cups it in her hands, savoring the steady, slow beat against her palms.

A week later she sits on a couch next to Shaw and watches her eat. She loves the way Shaw devours her food, intent, appreciative, half-savage and utterly unselfconscious.

"Okay," Shaw says after she's finished, haphazardly wiping her mouth with a napkin. "What do you want?"

"Just your company, Sameen." Root brushes her thumb over a spot at the corner of Shaw's mouth where she missed a bit of dressing. Shaw lets her. "Mm, yummy," Root says after she licks her thumb clean, enjoying the way Shaw's eyes are drawn to her mouth.

"Cut the crap. You had to go thirty minutes out of your way to get this for me." Shaw indicates the empty takeout containers on the coffee table with a jerk of her chin. "You're trying to soften me up. Tell me why."

"Can't a girl do a nice thing now and then for her very special someone, without there being ulterior motives in play?"

"Sure, I guess, unless you're the 'girl'."

"No objections to being the 'very special someone', then?"

Shaw looks away. "Oh. You want to talk about feelings."

"Your favorite subject, I know." Root reaches out and takes Shaw's hand in hers. It remains limp and unresponsive, a passive protest that, from Shaw, is as good as verbal permission. "I've been keeping something of yours."

That gets a reaction. Shaw's fingers briefly, compulsively curl around Root's, and the sideways glance at Root's face quickly turns into determined staring into middle distance. The wallpaper _is_ quite lovely. Root picked it herself.

"I don't want it back," Shaw says.

"I know," Root says, giving Shaw's hand a squeeze.

Shaw, annoyed and still not looking at Root, twists her hand free. "Then _what_?"

"I think it's only fair that you get something in return." Root takes out her heart – the heart she was born with – and holds it out to Shaw.

It doesn't look like much, resting on her palm: marble white with a smattering of dark, rusty red across one half, reminiscent of blood spray. Root has always thought it doesn't measure up to her second heart, but sickly or not, it's all she has to offer.

"It's temperamental," Root says, "and at times loud. I know you don't have much use for it, but it would mean something to me, Sameen, to know that you have it."

Shaw tilts her head up and studies the ceiling. Her throat moves as she swallows. After a few seconds she draws in an audible breath, and hope hangs on the corners of Root's widening smile, because that's Shaw's 'I'm surrounded by idiots, but I'm going to go along with their stupid plans anyway' inhale.

"Fine," Shaw snaps, making an impatient gimme-gesture with her fingers. "Give it here."

Root grabs a handful of Shaw's hair and kisses her instead.

"Let me," Root says when they part, their mouths still close enough to almost touch when she speaks. 

When Shaw doesn't protest and doesn't pull away, Root slowly pushes the heart into her chest.

"Oh," Shaw says, her eyes fluttering shut. It's a breathy sound, nothing at all like the flat, unimpressed 'oh' their conversation started with.

Root draws her hand back and rests her fingertips on Shaw's sternum.

"Does it hurt?" She asks.

"A little," Shaw replies, and Root smiles.

"Good."


End file.
